Konami’s announcement of the restructuring of its gaming division was confusing. At first it seemed like they were getting out of the business, but now it seems like game development will continue. Many fans think they should just liquidate their gaming franchises and sell them off to the highest bidder.
There are a lot of companies that would assuredly not only love to publish old games in new collections, but make new hits as well. The following takes into account some of the biggest franchises along with who is most worthy of carrying on these legacies. These would make the most sense based on past games in these companies.
10 Metal Gear
Sony should buy this property. Not because they have a partnership with Hideo Kojima, but because of Naughty Dog. The Metal Gear series has one of the craziest stories in the industry. Naughty Dog could reboot the series and give it more emotional weight. Plus their stealth mechanics in The Last of Us series is pretty good. Just think about how good a coherent Metal Gear story would be.
9 Silent Hill
Giving Silent Hill to Activision might at first seem like a bad idea. When they acquire hits, they run them into the ground. However, they should at least be given the opportunity via Treyarch. No, this Silent Hill should not become a shooter although Treyarch’s combat skills could help. More importantly they seemingly want to make a horror game as evidenced by the most recent Black Ops game, Cold War, along with the third entry.
8 Castlevania
Bloodborne was like FromSoftware’s attempt at a bloodier Castlevania game. If they got the official license then who knows what they could do with it. Making a Souls like Castlevania may turn some people off. Not every game needs to be that hard and FromSoftware also doesn’t have to make it as challenging. Why not give them a shot as it has been seven years already since Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 from 2014.
7 Contra
Gears of War is already like Contra in that it took the bro shooter mentality of the 90s and added in a late 00s flair. Microsoft also has Halo, another bro type shooter about fighting aliens.
Do they need another? Why not? If Microsoft bought Contra and gave it to The Coalition then they could have a trilogy of shooters under their exclusive belts.
6 Boktai
Square Enix should get Boktai. Most of those games could be likened to Metal Gear Solid as they were stealth games with more fantastical creatures. The last game, Lunar Knights, was more like an action RPG. Square Enix excels in that department which is where the connection gets made. It could be more lighthearted in tone and style like the recent remake of Trials of Mana, or Kingdom Hearts.
5 Ganbare Goemon
Nintendo could probably do a good job with a lot of these franchises since many of them originated on one of their platforms like the NES. The Ganbare Goemon games never made that much of a splash over here despite many, many sequels in Japan. The vision here is a more Japanese-centric Zelda game. Many of these games were similar in nature to that series anyway. Plus it would give Nintendo a ninja franchise too although Goemon is a ninja in the same way Naruto is a ninja.
4 Bloody Roar
Capcom is closely associated with the fighting game genre since they own Street Fighter. However, they already have too many fighting series under their belts. That’s why Arc System Works should pick up Bloody Roar.
For those unaware since the last game was all the way back in 2004 on PS2, this series was about fighters who could turn into animals. There’s not really anything like it today besides video games with fighters that happen to be animals, or animal like people like in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
3 Suikoden
Suikoden is special in the RPG realm because of its giant cast of characters. Most of the games have over a hundred characters in them. Some party members are best left out of battle and put in charge of other duties like tending shops or cooking. It’s all about uniting them all to create an army of justice. That’s more or less the idea of Suikoden 2 at least. Atlus is a good RPG developer that knows how to juggle a lot of characters via Persona.
2 Zone Of The Enders
EA is another developer, like Activision, that likes to run series into the ground and or abandon them. However, one of their developers, Respawn, could make a killer Zone of the Enders game. Fans might be eagerly anticipating Titanfall 3 more so maybe they could tackle it after that project. However, this would be a fine year to announce something since 2021 is Zone of the Ender’s 20th anniversary.
1 Adventure Island
Ubisoft should get this forgotten series and develop it under the UbiArt engine. Fans might want another Rayman instead, but either way they need to utilize this art style again. For some context, the last Adventure Island game was in 2010 via phones but the last console version was a WiiWare title in 2009. Adventure Island: The Beginning was like a remake of the first game on NES.